Productive Activities of Monasteries as Religious Tourism Products

The “religious interest tourism product” primarily refers to pilgrimage visits to shrines, places of worship, liturgical celebrations and includes religious events and traditions, while internationally some other activities are also considered. A research in Greece on the popularity of excursions demanded of travel agencies to religious and pilgrimage sites, has identified a number of areas, including both known tourism destinations but also specific religious shrines and has also revealed the organizing entities of religious stakeholders. As evidenced from the results of another survey conducted in the Dioceses of the Church of Greece, organized religious administrations, particularly monasteries, have added to their purely religious tasks, primarily as a means of support, activities such as, land cultivation, crops raising, candle making, iconography, and other handicrafts, as well as production of saleable products for the religious use such as incense and rosaries, or for home use including food and beverage products. These activities, while initially, have not been undertaken with the thought of selling to the pilgrims and visitors, in many cases have developed into important revenue sources for the Monastic brotherhoods and for the local religious administrations, and some of these products are of renowned quality, sold widely. Thus, the paper summarizes selected characteristics of the pilgrimage activity in Greece, both from the religious and from the tourism aspect.